Make Time for Yourself- It's Your Time

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The book Make Time for Yourself— It’s Your Time is a text written from a very personal standpoint, in the context of the author's spiritual life as a monk. "Nothing in this world has eternal value. Use your time and don’t waste it... ""Time is for most of us a luxury good." Making time for yourself and giving time to others is a source of joy that enriches our lives. The quiet time we devote to prayer or meditation gives us strength to master our lives and enhances our spirituality.

Dr Notker Wolf OSB, born in 1940 in Bad Gronenbach in Bavaria, Germany, is the highest ranking Benedictine of the Confederation of the Benedictines. As Abbot Primate of the order of St Benedict, he is constantly travelling to visit the 8,100 monks and 17,000 nuns and sisters in Benedictine communities all over the world. His headquarters are at Saint’ Anselmo in Rome. Notker Wolf speaks 13 languages, seven of them fluently. An enthusiastic musician, he plays classical music on the flute and performs on the electric guitar in a German rock group "Feedback". He is a very realistic, open-minded and encouraging person with a great sense of humour. Interreligious dialogue, "loving the world of the other,’ is an integral part of his Christian spirituality. With his views on leadership, he is frequently sought out not only in church circles but also by managers in the business world.

RECENTLY at the airport in Rome, the young woman at the check-in for the flight to Santo Domingo and Guatemala looked at me as she gave me back my documents and said in disbelief: "You are in the air more than a pilot!" And it’s true that I do cover a lot of miles every year.

I am sure that three of the ten days of my trip to Santo Domingo and Guatemala were spent sitting in a plane. And in addition, nearly every day I/ travelled for two to four hours by car.

My mobile existence might seem extreme, but this is the general tendency today. It has to do with the increase in mobility and the networking of our world, and in my case of course with my function: as an Abbot Primate I am responsible for 800 monasteries, which are located on all five of the world’s continents. To fulfil my responsibilities I sometimes have to live the life of a manager with an improbable number of appointments. And on the other hand, my life as a monk is ordered in an entirely different way.

The question preoccupying many people today concerns me too: with all the stress and hectic pace of modern life, can you still find some peace? With all the pressure on you from outside, can you still be in control of your own time?

An international manager who recently sat next to me on the plane asked, " You're so calm, even though your situation is basically no different from ours. How do you do it?"

It was this question that prompted me to start writing. My idea was that people might be particularly interested in reading about the thoughts and experiences of someone who is himself working under great time pressure.

Sometimes when I mentioned what I was writing about, people asked with a touch of irony whether I was going to practise what I preached. | told them, "T believe that what I have in common with others is not only a specific need but also the fact that I am looking for ways to deal with it. But what I believe in particular is that the tradition I come from is very helpful in this respect."

Many people, not only managers, suffer from having less and less time for the things that are really important. Time for yourself — this seems to be becoming a scarce luxury good.

"Time for myself " is time to be together with others or to be free for prayer. I can simply drop my work. This for me is very important: just to stop what I am doing and say now something else is more important. During prayer it is God, during conversation it is the other person.

The ancient proverb of Qohelet in the Bible is as true today as it ever was: "Everything in life has its own time.

There is a time of joy and also a time of sadness. A person who is under such time pressure that he cannot let go in order to cry is in a critical state. And so is a person who cannot laugh heartily.

I am repeatedly guided by the wisdom of this preacher from the Old Testament. Of course I cannot separate the periods of joy and sadness as I would like to do.They are going to overlap. But it is not just a question of dividing up an objective span of time. It is a question of humanizing this time.

The time I spend with other people or in a one-to- one conversation is quite different from the time when am trying to see how many e-mails I ought to get done in an hour. During a conversation I am not looking at my watch, there is no rush. A person is there and it is his time. This applies even more to prayer. Then time acquires not only a human but a divine dimension.

Even Jesus is a shining example of how to make use of time. Over and over again he sought solitude in order to pray. And when he walked by the Sea of Nazareth with his disciples he devoted his time solely to them. The story of the road to Emmaus illustrates how he was there for people who were close to him and wanted to tell him their troubles. But even the disciples still sometimes had to wait if other people needed his help. I love these stories, also those that relate how Jesus withdrew, exhausted, to the home of his friends in Bethany, where he himself could simply become "human" again in the literal sense of the word. Jesus also set limits when others, such as the Pharisees, tried to put pressure on him or importune him. As we read in the gospel of Saint Luke, he also rebuffed somebody who was acting as if his life would never come to an end. He told a parable in which God says to a rich man. "You fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul: and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then? (Luke 12:20)

I am also guided by our founder St Benedict. Based on his reflections on the quality of time, the founder of western monasticism succeeded as virtually no other has done in creating a highly refined way of structuring time. The daily routine of the monks, which is balanced and governed by an inner rhythm based on the liturgy and nature and gives each day and year a special quality, still has much that can serve as a source of inspiration and benefit for the secular world today.

The time which is the subject of this book is nothing that we can "have" or "take," nothing we can trade or with which we can become rich. Some people say "time is money." And it is certainly right that time is precious. Because it is limited. Our lifetime, like our life, cannot be bought, it is a gift. When we say we are giving each other time or talk about "time costs," then it is clear from the language how precious time is.

Of course there is the time which is measured by the clock in minutes and seconds. This is important too, because it gives order to our lives. But this order is only half of life. Our lives are finite. And when we talk about time, we are also talking about the art of making good and sensible use of our lives during the limited time we are in the world. Those who want to save time and constantly become more hectic may well end up by losing time.

A general return to slowness is no remedy. We cannot isolate ourselves from the tempo of our world, but in the midst of this pressure must look for ways of finding "our" time. Life requires time. And if I don't take any time for myself any more, then this life is not worth anything.

There is apparently a valley in the Tyrol where people greet each other with "Take your time!" And even if someone has made this up, there is something in this greeting. It is almost a blessing.

To take your time, to take time for yourself, to make more conscious use of your time — this is what this book is about: Make time for yourself. It's your time!

So at the end of our lives we can leave the temporal world in a state of blessedness.